Algeria hostage crisis: wives and girlfriends help identify victims

The wives and girlfriends of six Britons killed at the BP gas plant have sent
toothbrushes and other items belonging to their loved ones to Algeria so
that DNA samples can be taken and matched to the victims’ remains.

Alan Wight back at home in Scotland with his wife KarlynPhoto: DEREK IRONSIDE

Five days after the first British worker was killed, families are still waiting for formal identification to take place, but David Cameron has confirmed that three Britons are dead and three others are missing, presumed killed.

A BP executive from Colombia, who had been living in London, was also killed.

One of the victims was Garry Barlow, 49, a father of two from Liverpool, who was forced to wear an explosive vest. He had phoned his wife during the attack to say that he would be killed if the Algerian army attempted a rescue.

Paul Morgan, a 46-year-old former soldier with the French Foreign Legion, was the first Briton to die in the hostage crisis. Mr Morgan, who was also from Liverpool, reportedly “went down fighting” when the al-Qaeda kidnappers attacked the bus he was travelling in on Wednesday, last week.

Kenneth Whiteside, a 59-year-old father-of-two from Scotland, and Carlos Estrada, a Colombian vice-president of BP who lived in Chelsea, west London, with his wife and children, were also among the dead.

The discovery of 25 charred bodies inside the In Amenas gas plant suggested that the terrorists murdered their captives before being overrun by Algerian security forces.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said that the British hostages had been “executed”.

One Briton was forced to betray his colleagues’ hiding place before he was shot by the terrorists, and another was shot while he tried to give first aid to the injured.

A total of 22 Britons were freed or escaped to safety. As they returned home over the weekend they began to recount the extraordinary stories of how they evaded capture.

Alan Wright, a 37-year-old health and safety officer from Aberdeenshire, hid in a locked office for 24 hours before disguising himself as an Algerian and crawling through a hole cut in a wire fence, in what he described as his own “Great Escape”.